Stick Bang or Kaboom

 Stick Bang or Kaboom whatever you call this game it is something you need to have in your teaching bag of tricks.  It is so popular with all of the students I work with.  They love this game in fact they beg to play this game.  I first found this game in a sight word packet I purchased from Reagan Tunstall.  It was the best $5.75 I spent on TPT. 

I have made so many games based of her idea and at a variety of grade levels.  

This year I made several different versions for different students. 

For the little four year olds I work with I made:

• Capital Letters
• Lowercase Letters
• Number Awareness to 20
• Shapes and Colors

For the five year olds I made:

• Number Awareness to 30 (for the beginning of the years)
• Number Awareness to 100
• CVC words

For the first graders I made:

• sight words at different levels
• CVC words
• CVCE words
• Blends/Digraphs
• vowel team words

For the advanced math students I work with I made:

• Fast Facts for Math Fluency

I keep all the different games in plastic quart size baggies and then have my large pails for games.

I have to admit with the four year olds we had to take the BANG stick out of the bucket.  There were way to many tears and the little ones were so happy to collect sticks.  

Another bonus to this activity is that I can easily put this together the night before.  You can use simple markers, stickers or pre-made materials to make the sticks more colorful.  Here is a link to Pinterest for more ideas.    

I Spy A Turkey

Source

My little ones love playing I Spy games and they need to continue to practice beginning sounds.  So I quickly put this together for the short week.  This is one of their word activities for Daily Five.  Looking around the room for things or words that begin with the letters that spell  TURKEY !

Click Here for your Free Copy

 Enjoy :)

Word Center

I worked a lot the past two days in my classroom.  I have it almost set up.  Now it is time to put the finishing touches on it.  I want to go center by center and make sure everything is in order for the first few weeks. 

I thought I would start in my new center the Word Center.  I am glad I decided to work here today.  It was not as organized as I thought it would be. 

First of all nothing is labeled.  So I had to make labels tonight.  

Second, I did not have everything I wanted in the center.  So I had to make a quick trip to Target, well it ended up to be two Targets to find what I wanted, cookie sheets. 

In order to prepare myself to organize this center I quickly reviewed the book, The Daily 5 Fostering Literacy Independence in The Elementary Grades, by Gail Boushey & Joan Moser.  They state in their book the purpose of the word center is that children should be able to “experiment with words for learning and practicing a spelling pattern and memorize high frequency words.”  So I want to keep that in mind as I organize my center. 

Items for a word center:

·      Whiteboards (check)

·      Magnetic letters (check)

·      Wikki Stix (just purchased)

·      Letter stamps (set aside until I introduce them)

·      Writing materials (check)

·      Alphabet puzzles (I am adding this for the beginning of the year)

·      Alphabet bingo (I am adding this as well.)

Ok I feel better about this center.  I made a cute graphic for my daily five chart using KPM Doodles graphics.

I'll add an after picture tomorrow after I label everything.